Michael Schmidt

This is so depressing.

Dr. Gladys West, Mathematician Whose Work Made GPS Possible, Dies at 95 ALEXANDRIA, VA — Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She passed away

The world has lost a true inspiration and legend. 💔

#GISChat

Dr. Gladys West, Mathematician Whose Work Made GPS Possible, Dies at 95 thezebra.org/2026/01/18/d...

The #ForestService and the #BureauOfLandManagment should do a better job predicting vegetation at regular time intervals. FIA and AIM plots should make this possible. Landfire and products like TreeMap or BigMap are good but you would think they could do better if it was prioritized more. #ecology

I’m going to add to this list: selling up to 3.2 million acres of public lands. (Also I don’t think Irans government is a force for good, but I don’t think Trump and the morons he appoints have any good plans dealing with Iran).

Good.

Let's dive into this a bit. A short and very incomplete thread on US Forest Service research. 1/

I think this a lot right now: maybe “x” is a good idea, but there is no way in hell that I’m trusting the current morons in charge with implementing it. Ex: unified fire, gov wide API, etc.

This tutorial will level up your skills and show you how to build animated wind maps from scratch. Watch it here: https://lnkd.in/e_8QaFn6 And if you’re ready to go deeper into the world of spatial data, check out my new book: Mapping Worlds with R: Your Journey from Beginner to Data Cartographer It’s packed with real projects, full code, and clear explanations for every step of the map-making process. Grab the book: https://payhip.com/b/MH9Ot Let’s catch the breeze, beautifully, in R. #rstats #GIS #DataVisualization #ClimateData #ERA5 #gganimate #WindMapping #Geospatial #EnvironmentalScience #OpenData #MilosMakesMaps #MappingWithR

Want to turn raw wind data into a mesmerizing, animated map?
With R, it’s easier than you think.
My new tutorial shows you how, step by step.
Let’s catch the breeze. ⤵️
youtu.be/EmVbVTqwoMU

#GIS #DataViz #gganimate #metR #WindMap #ClimateData #SpatialAnalysis #MilosMakesMaps

This should surprise absolutely no one.

Birds of the World - New study finds where birds are declining most; some locales with positive trends “This is the first time we’ve had fine-scale information on population changes across such broad spatial extents and across entire ranges of species. And that provides us a better lens to understand t...

New study finds where birds are declining most. High trend resolution data reveals complexity of bird population changes. “This is the first time we’ve had fine-scale information on population changes across such broad spatial extents and across entire ranges of species,” said Dr. Amanda Rodewald.

MAGA perception: the gov is now more efficient.
Reality:

my supervisor had to rewrite my entire performance evaluation because it contained the word “biodiversity”

NO ONE is well staffed this year — ESPECIALLY the Incident Management Teams, which are largely made up of non-primary fire personnel.

If your rep is saying otherwise, they’re lying to you.

🫠

Ha, this is a joke.

My team has seven positions on it; five foresters and two archaeologists.

We were going to be fully staffed this year — then Trump took office. We lost two to the hiring freeze, and our remaining archaeologist took a new job b/c he figured he was going to be RIFed.

Introducing the "tree ring plot": a new way to visualize global surface temperatures. Each ring is a year, and each colored cell represents a day in global average temperatures (compared to a 1850-1900 preindustrial baseline).

Non-Government Career Paths for U.S. Federal Data Scientists A community support and networking event hosted by rOpenSci and Openscapes

📣 Current and former #USgov data scientists!

Join @ropensci.org + @openscapes.bsky.social on May 6 for a community support and networking event:

ropensci.org/events/datas...

Co-hosted by former feds (NOAA, NASA, DOE, NSF, NIH + Federal Reserve) to discuss their paths to other sectors. #dataBS

NSF Grant Termination Information Collection Form Please use this form to submit information identifying specific NSF grants that have been cancelled for any reason after January 20, 2025. We are tracking these grants to increase transparency, organize affected PIs, and facilitate responses, including via litigation. Please share the form as widely as possible with your networks. We are actively building a pipeline to organize these terminations and will soon have a tracker akin to our NIH grant tracker at https://airtable.com/appjhyo9NTvJLocRy/shrNto1NNp9eJlgpA WE WILL NOT DISCLOSE THE IDENTITY OF ANYONE WHO USES THIS FORM TO PROVIDE INFORMATION. We will keep your identity confidential. These resources are maintained by Noam Ross of rOpenSci and Scott Delaney of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with input and support from additional volunteers. For any questions, please contact Scott Delaney on Signal (sdelaney.84). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE!

🚨Report your NSF grant terminations! 🚨

We are starting to collect information on NSF grant terminations to create a shared resource as we have for NIH. The more information we collect, the more we can organize, advocate, and fight back! Please share widely!

airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

Good thread answering some of the questions made by DOJ.

15. Or maybe it has to do with his failure to grasp that science is a highly decentralized form of knowledge production, with strong incentives for individuals to refute common understanding and disprove dominant theories or explanations.

One of the most satisfying aspects of my work at Stanford the last few years has been helping research scientists to bring their scientific work to application and scale. One of our first projects. news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...

Here's a small window into what's actually going on for our situation... 😩

the way I’ve been thinking about it is: if noncitizens face real danger for saying what they think, then it is the responsibility of citizens, who don’t yet face that same danger, to be even louder

This is so fucked.

GitHub - walkerke/tigris: Download and use Census TIGER/Line shapefiles in R Download and use Census TIGER/Line shapefiles in R - walkerke/tigris

Users of the tigris #rstats package: the Census website is acting up again, so the package installed from CRAN isn't working

Install with `remotes::install_github("walkerke/tigris")`; I've got a new patch in place that will handle the errors for you

github.com/walkerke/tig...

Moved 40% of my retirement to international stock index funds. Betting the global economy does better than the US economy for the next 4 years.

Seems like this administrations moto should be Make America Dumb Again. Goodness. This is so stupid.

Wow!

The GOP Tax Scam takes food out of the mouths of children to reward their billionaire donors like Elon Musk.

Democrats will strongly oppose this reckless budget.

And we can defeat it tomorrow on the House floor if just four Republicans join us.

The worst people are in charge of the United States. It’s disgusting and evil.